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DEC. JAN. 2021 VIII and educational institutions to revise and reorganise teaching. Many uncertainties and shortcomings in this regard still persist. It is good to shed some light on some aspects: there are two different environments: one, State, linked to the Ministry, hotel institutes, cooking schools recognised by the State, the other Regional, on which the vocational training centres that are not part of the ministerial programmes depend. The DPCM at the end of August provided for a reorganisation of teaching in high school, the aim of which was to limit the number of people using public transport during peak hours and to avoid any possible crowding among adolescents through the activation of distance teaching (which at the beginning of the school had to be alternated with lessons in attendance). In order for all this to materialise, the Ministry of Education had obliged all the schools in the country to adopt internal regulations. “We approved the regulation at the beginning of September,” says Franca Romagnoli, deputy head of the Istituto Paolo Carlo Urbani Tarantelli Sant’Elpidio a Mare, “in the wake of the school’s recovery. Today, with the latest Prime Ministerial Decree, many things have changed. Almost everything happens at a distance. A lesson lasts 45 minutes, no longer 60 because of the hourly disconnection, because we can no longer do 32 hours of lessons per week, as was the case in the past, but only 20 hours of online teaching, which is precisely the maximum allowed. And everything is done in asynchronous activity, that is, we give homework to the children who do it digitally in the afternoon so that they do not exceed the hours allowed in web mode.” The measure makes it possible to benefit from integrated digital didactics for 75% of the activities, giving pupils a presence in the laboratory of no more than 25%. Therefore, the directive does not prohibit laboratory activity in the presence of state hotel establishments and gives them the burden of deciding which laboratories to do in the presence and which not. Opportunities are, however, denied to vocational training centres, many of which are forced to close their doors due to the legislative gap. Fabrizia Ventura, Chef Designer, Director of APCI LAZIO, Lecturer at the Hotelier di Amatrice and the Tu Chef school in Rome says: “My students at the Istituto di Amatrice when there are the kitchen, dining room and bar workshops can easily attend the lesson at the premises. Unlike those of Tu Chef, another private cooking school where I teach. This is because the school manager has decided to close all the courses so as not to incur administrative penalties”. FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE Many things have changed since March last year. Despite the restrictions and inconvenience caused by Covid19, only a few hoteliers are able to ensure full teaching, including laboratory teaching in attendance, thanks to internal catering and hospitality services. “We are an environment with a closed supply chain,” says Andrea Vallino, coordinator of the technical- professional area of the Hotel School of Valle d’Aosta, Fondazione per la Formazione Professionale Turistica, “therefore, we do not do laboratory teaching as an end in itself, made up only of tests and tastings. Our boarding school has 80 students who, supervised by our teachers, before the Coronavirus emergency, prepared and served about 600 meals a day for their classmates and the institute staff; today, unfortunately, due to the restrictions, only 400 are made”. It is clear that the practical approach of cooking schools and institutes is more articulated than that of other schools with different addresses and specialities. The various kitchen, lounge, bar, computer and language laboratories confirm the complexity of the organisation. So, to better manage the laboratory activities, some places have preferred to give more hours to the first three laboratories (kitchen, lounge, bar), which are essential for hoteliers, rather than to the last two, suspending them (computer, linguistic). It is equally clear that the interaction between the students and the teachers has changed because, in addition to the purely didactic function required by their role, the latter also have the task of checking that the students comply with the rules imposed by the Ministry of Health during the activities in attendance. “Lessons are no longer free,” says Director APCI LAZIO, “as when you could enter the kitchen with 40 boys MAGAZINE